'Vietnam' takes a profound look at the conflict, including through the eyes of a Santa Fe resident

As producers of “Vietnam: The War That Changed America,” David Glover and Caroline Marsden realized there were going to be captivating stories.

The difficult part came down to paring down those stories into six episodes.

The series, narrated by Ethan Hawke, takes a profound look at what it was like to live through one of history’s longest wars, as told through first-person accounts and rarely seen footage. All six episodes are currently streaming on Apple TV+.

Glover tells the story of Adm. Larry Chambers, the first African American ever to command a U.S. aircraft carrier.

Chambers is a brave, dignified man who has always led by example and been driven by a deep sense of right and wrong.

In April 1975, as the bloody ravages of the Vietnam War finally approached a long-overdue close, Chambers did something staggering, defying his orders to save a South Vietnamese family fleeing the country in a two-seat Cessna.

As Chambers’ aircraft carrier powered through the Pacific, the Vietnamese family’s plane was spotted circling it, its engine stuttering. A note dropped from its cockpit revealed the plane’s predicament: they were running out of fuel, fast. Out in the middle of the ocean, there was only one place for them to land, and its deck was currently covered in grounded helicopters and equipment being transported back home.

With the Cessna running on fumes, Chambers made a decision that would not just save the lives of those inside it, but also give them new ones in America. He instructed his men to push the millions of dollars’ worth of choppers parked on deck overboard to urgently make room for the family to land before it was too late.

“It’s an extraordinary story,” Glover said of this jaw-dropping sequence in “Vietnam: The War That Changed America.” But, he added, in the context of this fascinating series, it also represents even more than merely an amazing anecdote.

Marsden said maybe most surprising of all the reunions in the series is that of Bill Broyles and Jeff Heirs, two men who did not get along when they first met.

“And that is putting it mildly,” noted Marsden.

Broyles, who lives in Santa Fe, is today the Hollywood screenwriter of the likes of “Apollo 13,” “Cast Away” and “Flags of Our Fathers,” but in Vietnam, he was a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant, drafted in to lead a platoon of men who made it clear from the outset that they had zero respect for him.

Chief among these rebellious troops was Heirs, a wild high school dropout and now radio man who refused to salute Broyles, the wealthy, newly minted officer. But it wasn’t army etiquette that was ultimately at stake; it was Broyles’ life.

By this stage in the war, as Heirs notes, “We were living like feral dogs. We were leaderless.” With drugs rife and respect for officers at an all-time low, there were essentially lawless platoons. Any officers these troops didn’t respect ran the risk of being “fragged” (killed). Fragging would usually, but not only, happen at night – often with a grenade tossed into their foxhole.

“We looked for an officer who had direct experience of being there at a time when fragging was at its peak,” said Marsden. “Bill and Jeff’s story has never been told in a documentary before.”

At the start of their story, Heirs’ dislike of Broyles, born of a belief that he wasn’t capable of leading their platoon, was so severe that the latter would sit up awake all night, terrified he wouldn’t make it to the next morning.

“The one thing you don’t want to be in war is by yourself,” Broyles said. “I was 25 and they were all 18, 19, and they hated me. I was scared, thinking, ‘Is this the night that the grenade comes into my foxhole?’”

Realizing that he had to step up – and fast – Broyles took command, and slowly his men, even Heirs, started to see him for the leader he would become.

“And now Bill and Jeff have this amazingly powerful, loving reunion, over 50 years later, with lots of tears,” Marsden recalled.

The moment when this pair both remember when, on his way out of Vietnam, Heirs eventually did give Broyles the salute that he had for so long refused to, is a genuine tear-jerker.

“It’s one of our absolute favorite moments,” Glover said. “Because you see how Bill earned it, and what that meant to him.”

'Vietnam' takes a profound look at the conflict, including through the eyes of a Santa Fe resident